Climate Food and Agriculture

Is agribusiness behind the ouster of one of its biggest critics?

Plunked down in the land of huge, chemical-addicted grain farms and the nation's greatest concentration of hog feedlots, Iowa State University's Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture has always had a tough row to hoe.

Imagine trying to operate an Anti-Cronyism League from Bush's West Wing, and you get an idea of what the Leopold Center is up against. Industrial agriculture runs the show in Iowa, sustained by regular infusions of federal cash and its government-sanctioned ability to "externalize" the messes it creates. The state grabbed $12.5 billion in federal agriculture subsidies between 1995 and 2004 -- second only to Bush's own home state. Iowa leads all states in hog production: It churned out 14.5 million pigs in 2001 alone, the vast majority from stuffed, environmentally and socially ruinous CAFOs (confined-animal feeding operations).

Yet since springing to life in 1987 by fiat of the Iowa legislature -- funded ingeniously by state taxes on nitrogen fertilizer and pesticide -- the Leopold Center has become an invaluable national resource for critics of industrial agriculture and seekers of new alternatives.

Now, however, a sudden purge at the top has called the Center's much-prized independence from industrial agriculture into question.

Lather, Prince, Repeat

Prince Charles frets over climate change, promotes organic foods Britain’s Prince Charles is getting dreadfully worried about climate change. In an interview with the BBC last week, he called it the “greatest challenge” to face humanity. And on CBS’s 60 Minutes last night, he said, “You know, if you look at the latest figures on […]

Argan Eat That?

Rare oil made from goat-pooped pits may save North African tree For centuries, since even before the Phoenicians arrived (there goes the neighborhood!), goats have climbed Morocco’s evergreen argan trees to munch their leaves and fruits. Then they poop or spit out the undigested fruit pits. Then shepherds root through the poop, pick out the […]

Barbarians at the Irrigate

Big Ag wins, fish and wildlife lose in California’s water wars Thanks in part to a recent public-relations blitz and some crucial assistance from the Bush administration, Big Agriculture seems to have won California’s decades-long water wars. Irrigation districts in California’s Central Valley are signing federal contracts that ensure taxpayer-funded water supply for the next […]

Ag giants launch new public-tv show that promises to be so bad it’s … bad

What do you get when Monsanto and the Farm Bureau (whose sorry politics are discussed here) team up with the National Corn Growers Association, the United Soybean Board, the U.S. Grains Council, and the National Cotton Council (discussed here)?

If your answer is vast-scale, heavily subsidized, environmentally ruinous agriculture, you have a point. But I was thinking of a different response: Television that promises to be so bad that it might qualify as camp.

You Picked a Bovine Time to Peeve Me

USDA loophole lets penned cows get certified organic The U.S. Department of Agriculture may be caving to owners of factory dairy farms by failing to revise some rules on organic milk. At issue is how the agency defines an organic bovine. One requirement is that the cows have “access to pasture,” but another provision allows […]

USDA inaction supports feedlot-style

Consumers looking for milk from grass-fed cows can't rely on the USDA's organic label.

As this Chicago Tribune article shows, the department has been allowing feedlot-style mega-dairies to claim organic status -- despite a recommendation from the National Organic Standards Board that it close existing loopholes.

Access to pasture lies at the heart of any meaningful definition of organic farm-animal stewardship. Grass-fed cows produce a healthier product, they're easier on the environment, and they're not forced to live miserable lives completely enslaved by the mechanized milker.

Organic farms don’t treat workers any better than other farms

As Grist's own Amanda Griscom Little recently reported, a trade group representing Kraft and Dean Foods has been quietly pushing Congress to tweak organic labelling standards to make them more friendly to food-processing giants.

Thankfully, the Organic Consumers Association has led a fight, so far successful, to stymie those changes.

While it's important to preserve the organic label's integrity on the supermarket shelf, it's just as important to interrogate what it means in the field. An interesting study published in UC Davis' Sustainable Agriculture Newsletter sheds much-needed light on that issue.

To create a truly sustainable food system, we’ll need to make some fundamental changes.

The sustainable-food movement has a class problem.

Slow Food, for example, is an essential organization, with its declaration of a universal "right to taste" and its mandate to ...

... oppose the standardisation of taste, defend the need for consumer information, protect cultural identities tied to food and gastronomic traditions, safeguard foods and cultivation and processing techniques inherited from tradition and defend domestic and wild animal and vegetable species.

The group has undeniably done important work internationally toward those goals; yet its U.S. branch tends to throw pricey events accessible only to an economic elite.

Examples like this abound.

Bye, Local

Organic farmers in U.S. losing business to foreign growers Organic is seen as a niche that helps smaller American farmers endure, but a sizeable chunk of the organic foods sold in the U.S. are being sourced from overseas suppliers. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that as much as $1.5 billion of organic food was […]